September 12, 2019 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The public is invited to attend the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s meeting to be held October 7-10, 2019 in Durham, NC. The meeting will be held at the The meeting will be held at the Durham Convention Center (301 W. Morgan St., Durham, NC 27701, Telephone 919-956-9404). Lodging for the meeting will be at the Durham Marriott Center City (201 Foster St, Durham, NC 27701, 919-768-6000).

Public Comments: Written comments must be received by 11:59 p.m. on September 25, 2019 to be included in the briefing book. Comments received after this date but before 5:00 p.m. on October 3, 2019 will be posted as supplemental materials on the Council meeting web page. After that date, all comments must be submitted using an online comment form available at available at http://www.mafmc.org/public-comment.

September 11, 2019 — Almost a year to the date after Hurricane Florence wreaked havoc in North Carolina’s fishing communities, Hurricane Dorian started its march toward the same target.

The week-long trek up the Southeast coastline had North Carolina’s fishermen pulling boats and removing gear from the waters. For most the effort paid off, with the aftermath proving to be little more than a cleanup and of course, precious time lost on the water.

Some were not as fortunate. Ocracoke Island, a barrier island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks near where Dorian made landfall Sept. 6, took the brunt and experienced catastrophic flooding with widespread destruction of property.

September 10, 2019 — A third of shrimp labeled “local” wild shrimp in North Carolina was actually imported farmed shrimp, a new study found.

A forensics sciences class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill obtained shrimp samples from 60 grocery stores and seafood markets across the state, and found that 35 percent mislabeled local shrimp at least once. That is consistent with the mislabeling rate on shrimp nationwide, the students wrote in the article published on BioRxiv.

September 6, 2019 — The death toll in the Bahamas rose to 23 as the eye of Hurricane Dorian moved off of South Carolina’s Cape Romain, near Myrtle Beach. At 2 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, Sept. 5, the storm was headed NNE with sustained winds of about 110 miles per hour, according to NOAA.

The hurricane was expected to bring an intense storm surge with heavy rainfall, high winds and tornadoes to the Carolinas before moving up the coast to lash the Northeast with bands of rain throughout the weekend.

Dorian’s hit comes almost exactly one year after Hurricane Florence came ashore near Wilmington, N.C., close to the South Carolina border.

On Thursday, the storm had knocked out power for about 250,000 customers in South Carolina, and about 360,000 residents of the state had evacuated. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a State of Emergency for all 100 counties in his state. Fishermen throughout the Carolinas were busy removing gear from the water as Dorian beat down on the Bahamas over the weekend.

August 30, 2019 — Seafood may be labeled as local from North Carolina, but often it actually comes from Asian ponds and arrives infused with harmful supplements, according to a new study.

A third of the shrimp marked as harvested from North Carolina waters likely was farm raised in a foreign country with fewer laws and oversight, according to a new study by the University of North Carolina.

Members of the study group bought 106 shrimp from 60 vendors, including 14 in Dare County and 15 in Hyde County. DNA tests determined the species.

The study highlights a practice where companies falsely label foreign seafood as local to sell at higher prices, double the amount in some cases.

“Consumers deserve to know what they’re getting,” said Glenn Skinner, executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association. “We feel strongly this should not be going on.”

August 29, 2019 — The recreational and commercial southern flounder seasons will close Sept. 4 in North Carolina waters. The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission made the decision at its meeting last week, adopting the Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan Amendment 2 as proposed by the Division of Marine Fisheries.

The commission did give the director of the Division of Marine Fisheries flexibility to change the dates of proposed commercial and recreational seasons so long as they still meet required harvest reductions. The division plans to issue proclamations this week that close the commercial and recreational season on Sept. 4. Changes to the allowable gears in the commercial ocean flounder fishery will also be implemented Sept. 4.

August 23, 2019 — The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission adopted the Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan Amendment 2 as proposed by the Division of Marine Fisheries, giving the director of the Division of Marine Fisheries flexibility with the commercial and recreational seasons so long as they meet the statutorily required harvest reductions.

The Division of Marine Fisheries anticipates issuing a proclamation next week that closes the commercial and recreational season around Sept. 4.

The most recent coast-wide (North Carolina to the east coast of Florida) stock assessment for Southern Flounder determined the stock is overfished and overfishing is occurring. Reductions in total removals of southern flounder are required by state law to achieve a sustainable harvest, end overfishing within two years and recover the stock from an overfished condition within a 10-year period. Management measures to meet these requirements have been developed for consideration by the Marine Fisheries Commission for implementation before fall 2019 and are found in draft Amendment 2.

August 9th, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission approved Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Atlantic Migratory Group Cobia (Atlantic cobia). Amendment 1 establishes management measures that transition the FMP from complementary management with the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Councils to sole management by the Commission. Amendment 1 to the FMP was initiated in anticipation of the Councils’ Regulatory Amendment 31 to the Coastal Migratory Pelagics (CMP) FMP, which was approved earlier this year and removed Atlantic cobia from the Councils’ oversight.

Amendment 1 changes several portions of the Commission’s FMP that were previously dependent on the CMP FMP and institutes a long-term strategy for managing in the absence of a federal plan. Several of these changes establish processes for the Commission to carry out management responsibilities previously performed by the South Atlantic Council, including the setting of harvest quotas and sector allocations, defining stock status criteria and recommending management measures to be implemented by NOAA Fisheries in federal waters. Additionally, Amendment 1 transitions responsibilities of monitoring and closing (if necessary) commercial harvest to the Commission.

Moving forward, the Commission will recommend to NOAA Fisheries that fishing in federal waters be regulated according to the state of landing. If a vessel has licenses for multiple states with open seasons, they must follow the most restrictive license’s regulations. If a vessel has licenses for multiple states, only one of which has an open season, they may fish under the regulations of the open state. Regulations resulting from this recommendation would only apply in federal waters. Fishermen would still be required to follow state possession or landing limits in state waters.

Amendment 1 establishes a harvest specification process, which allows the Board to specify a limited set of management measures for up to 3 years. One of the measures that may be set through this process is a coastwide harvest quota. However, until the first specification process occurs, after completion of the ongoing stock in 2020, the current coastwide quota (670,000 pounds) remains in effect.

The Amendment also changes the units used to measure and evaluate the recreational fishery from pounds numbers of fish. To accommodate this change, the recreational harvest quota in pounds (620,000) is converted to numbers (22,142 fish) and allocated among the states, resulting in the following state recreational harvest targets:

States still may set their own seasons and vessel limits to achieve their respective targets.

Finally, Amendment 1 establishes a de minimis status for the commercial sector that exempts states with small commercial harvests from in-season monitoring requirements. States are required to implement measures of Amendment 1 by July 1, 2020. Amendment 1 will be available on the Commission’s website, http://www.asmfc.org/species/cobia, by the end of August.

August 6, 2019 — Seagrass is more plentiful within the North Carolina Outer Banks than along any other eastern state’s coast except Florida, but it is losing ground.

State biologists are surveying seagrasses that prefer the saltier waters of the Pamlico Sound and waterways southward for the third time in a dozen years. A report is expected to come out early next year.

Spotters are seeing areas where seagrass is not present in places where it should be, said Jud Kenworthy, a retired NOAA marine scientist who is a volunteer team leader on the seagrass survey for the Albemarle Pamlico National Estuary Partnership.

Surveys in 2007 and in 2012 indicate the estuaries support about 150,000 acres of seagrass, but have declined at a rate of about a half percent to 1.5 percent per year, Kenworthy said.